


even children get older

by lastwingedthing



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Canonical Character Death Only, F/M, Multi, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:41:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/pseuds/lastwingedthing
Summary: Hera and Rex in the war: making a new life doesn't mean forgetting the past.





	even children get older

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



Hera awoke to darkness and quiet: an empty bed beside her, an empty cot across the room.

She might have panicked, two years ago; but here, today, she just drew in a deep breath and let it go. The walls of the _Ghost_ were comfortingly familiar around her, the small noises of a well-running ship moving through hyperspace: home and safety and family.

She could smell food cooking.

Smiling, she rolled out of bed and into her flight suit, left hanging from the night before. There was no real reason to be quiet as she moved through the corridors; Zeb and Kallus were in the Deep Core trying to make contact with a group of potential military defectors, and Sabine was back in Mandalorian space again, working on building new alliances with her clan. Chopper didn’t sleep, didn’t mind her walking around at night. And the others…

The others were in the galley, as she’d expected. Rex was standing by the stove, stirring something in a widemouthed pot clipped to the heating unit; Jacen was perched on the countertop beside him, watching sleepy-eyed and beating his stuffed shaak toy gently against the wall behind him.

Hera walked over and scooped him up, kissing the top of his velvety furry head.

“Mama,” he shouted, smiling brilliantly as his little warm body relaxed into her hold. “Rex, Mama’s here!”

“Mama missed you, baby,” Hera said, kissing him again before she set him back on the counter. He was getting heavier; hybrid growth rates were always unpredictable, but she thought he was larger than average for his age, for either of his parents’ species. It made finding clothes for him interesting, the rate he grew… but life would be boring if it didn’t have a challenge for her every now and then.

“That smells good,” she said to Rex, meaning it; the powerfully pungent, savoury aroma coming from the stove smelled wonderful. And she knew it was likely to taste good, too. Rex was a good cook – brilliant at the kind of scratch cooking you needed on the _Ghost_ , turning a few dented cans and a bag of dried algae flakes into a delicious meal for half a dozen.

Rex turned to face her, looking faintly sheepish. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, apologetically. “The little one was restless, and I couldn’t sleep either. Thought we could amuse ourselves out here, and let you sleep.”

She moved in behind him, kissed the side of his head with quite a different intention than she’d kissed the baby’s. “That’s sweet, but I’m alright. Feels like I’ve done nothing but sleep, these last few missions, what with all the long jumps we’ve been doing.”

Rex nodded. “If the Alliance could just make up its mind which side of the galaxy they wanted us on… Ah well. It’s good to get some downtime.”

Hera shrugged one shoulder, letting that one go. She was busy looking at the rows of bags and packets lining the counter on the other side of Rex, the heap of empty bug shells by the chopping board…

“Are those fermented casebugs? I didn’t think Humans could even eat them!”

Rex snorted. “We can – it’s just that most won’t. Core worlder prejudices.”

Hera nodded, half-smiling. She missed every part of Kanan, every day… but the hurt was distant enough now that he was coming back into focus as a real person, not just a shining figure in her constellation of the sainted dead, a real man who had driven her mad sometimes with his joking Core World remarks about her favourite childhood foods.

It was better this way, to remember the reality of him, not just the wonderful perfect dream she’d lost forever. But she still missed him…

At least she wasn’t entirely alone.

“So clones don’t care?”

“Protein’s protein. And these just taste good.”

Hera leaned over his shoulder, taking a look. Rex seemed to be cooking some kind of chunky reddish spice mix in oil; from the smell, the casebugs made up a large part of it, though some kind of firepod seemed to be a significant component as well.

She sniffed appreciatively. “What _is_ that?”

Rex grinned, and gestured: there was a bowl of a chunky reddish powder cooling on the bench behind the bug shells.

“Try it,” Rex offered, tilting his elbow towards a box of staling starch crackers Hera recognised vaguely as having been sitting in the back of the pantry cupboard since just after they’d had that rations shortage on Atollon. She ignored the crackers, and went straight in to scoop up a generous lump of the powder with her fingers. Rex raised an eyebrow, but she was Twi’lek, born on Ryloth to a family of traditionalists. If a Human could eat this, she’d be fine.

Despite her confidence, her lekku clenched and rippled at the taste: it was incredibly strong even to a Twi’lek’s palate, spicy and sour and sweet and salty all at once, with deeply savoury, fermented flavours from the bugs and what were likely several different kinds of powdered dried fungi.

It was good – incredibly good – but not the kind of thing she’d expect to find a Human eating, let alone going out of his way to make.

“Wow,” she said, finally. “That’s incredible, Rex – can you even eat it?”

Rex just laughed.

“Not like you just did. I'll use it as a seasoning mix for that old wild nerf I shot yesterday – the meat will be gamy and tough as leather, but this will help it go down easier. It’s good to have on hand, this goes with just about everything.” He paused, eyes distant. “I think it’s called galloo uupacha – or galloo uupala? We just called it ammo dust – Wolffe used to say he could eat a whole box of ammo if it had a bit of this on top.”

Hera frowned, sounding out the names Rex had used to herself. The language sounded almost Huttese, but the accent was wrong for any dialect of Huttese she knew. But Rex had spent decades on the fringes of the Outer Rim, on all kinds of strange planets – who knew where he could have picked it up?

Jacen was attempting to murder his shaak against the wall again, which at least was distracting him from getting into anything more dangerous. Hera would trust Rex’s augmented reflexes with her life, but trusting Jacen in a kitchen was pushing it – at least while she was here to watch and get nervous.

She picked Jacen up again and lifted them both up so that she could sit where Jacen had been, with the toddler held securely on her lap. He immediately nestled in close to her, tugging on the zip to her flight suit, which he always found irresistibly fascinating.

“I don’t recognise the language – where’s it from?” she asked, expecting one of Rex’s improbable Wild Space tall tales.

He met her eyes squarely, and she saw no trace of humour in them, nothing but a deep familiar sadness.

“You wouldn’t. It’s a Huttese slave dialect.”

Hera bit her lip, suddenly aware of the minefield: an old, old injustice, dating back long before the fall of the Republic. “I didn’t know you knew anyone who’d been a slave in that region.”

“Didn’t I ever tell you about my General? He grew up on Tatooine, didn’t make it to the Jedi until he was nine.”

Hera blinked at that – she’d always thought Jedi were taken to the Order much younger, from everything Kanan had told her – but she let it go, let Rex continue.

“He learned this one from his mother – most of the slaves in her part of Hutt Space made something like it. Most of the ingredients are cheap, you can get casebugs and fungi anywhere, and it makes even the worst rations go down alright…” He smiled, a brief twitch of his mouth. “They knew what they were doing, those people. Every clone wanted to be in my old company, Torrent, and it wasn’t just because we were the best – we _ate_ the best, too. Anakin was never afraid to supplement our rations with whatever we could catch, and he knew how to break down and cook _anything_. It was important for Ahsoka, too – our standard rations never had quite enough protein for her, bugs and wild game were the easiest ways we could get the balance right for her. Used to drive her mad, the way the General and I would sneak extra protein into everything she ate. She still thought she was invincible, could get away with anything… But kriffing hell, we all thought that, back then.”

He trailed off. Looking at him properly, now, Hera could see the clenched tension in his shoulders, the deep lines around his eyes.

Grief was never simple or straightforward, she’d learned. An ambush predator, lurking in dark places, leaping out at you when you least expected… and it didn’t move in straight lines, an easy forward path from devastation to peace.

You’d think you were well and safe and happy, and then a memory would strike you, or a dream…

Rex mentioned General Skywalker and Ahsoka often, but he never really _talked_ about them. Not like this. He’d said a few things to her and Kanan, mostly in bed, enough to make it clear that whatever had been between them went far beyond simple military companionship – but the real stories, the things that made them come in focus as the vibrant living people they’d once been, those were missing.

“Rex,” she whispered. She set Jacen down on his own again so she could stand and walk behind him, wrap her arms around his broad solid shoulders.

She felt him sigh, a long shiver that shook his body.

“It’s alright,” he said at last. His hands came up to hold hers, squeezing tight. “I’m alright. They’ve both been gone a long time, I’m used to missing them.”

“Never really goes away, though, does it?” Hera said softly.

Rex shook his head.

"At least I got to say goodbye to Ahsoka," he said, after a pause. "At least she knew how I felt..."

Kanan had known. They didn't say it out loud often, but she knew how he felt, she knew he understood her feelings before she realised them herself.

They stayed like that for a long peaceful moment, the solid Human warmth of him pressed comfortably against her… Then Rex swore and leapt.

“Jacen! No!”

Hera turned, horrified – her son was still on the counter, all of him focused entirely on the cracker loaded up with spice mix that was floating through the air towards him. She sighed in relief, in resignation towards what she knew was coming.

As she watched Rex grabbed the cracker out of the air and crushed it, tossing the remains into the trash.

“No, Jacen,” he said again, sternly. “You can’t do that.”

The little boy’s face crumpled. “Mama,” he cried, turning towards her, but she hardened her heart and shook her head sternly. This had been her decision, ultimately: for now it was far too dangerous for her son to get in the habit of using the Force. It didn’t matter that they were safe here on the _Ghost_ : if he learned to do flashy tricks here, he’d be more likely to do them away from home, where strangers could see him. That was a danger she simply wasn’t willing to accept.

Maybe one day… when he was older, when the Empire fell…

Jacen was wailing properly now, tears running all over his face. Rex picked him up before Hera could and soothed him, rocking him back and forth and whispering something in the little pointed shell of his ear. Gradually the crying stopped.

“Bedtime for this little one, I think,” Hera said.

Rex nodded. “Just let me clean up here,” he said, holding out Jacen for her.

Jacen looked up at her piteously, blue eyes huge and sad; the crying had dwindled down to sniffles, but there was still tears and mucus all over his face. Hera kissed a dry spot on his forehead, feeling her heart twist. She felt like the worst cruellest mother in the world, denying her son such a joyful power, his last link with the father he’d never know…

But she had to keep him safe. That came before anything.

“Almost done here,” Rex said quietly behind her. Hera nodded, busy cleaning Jacen’s face up.

She tossed the rag in the wash basket hanging from the side of the stove, watching as Rex packed away the last of the spice mix, this last batch still warm enough to steam up its container.

“I’ll marinate the nerf tomorrow, I think. I still need to finish breaking the carcass down…” Rex winced at her expression.

“In the cargo bay, please. You couldn’t have done that outside, while we were still on the planet?”

“You were in a hurry,” Rex said mildly. Now that she thought about it, Hera did remember a bit of a rush towards the end of that trip, a squad of TIE fighters heading down towards the planet barely leaving her the airspace for an exit.

“Oh yeah,” she said, grinning at the memory. That had been a nice smooth exit, if she could say so herself. “Sorry about that.”

Jacen shifted against her, wiggling just enough to put her off balance. “Mama…”

“Oh, right.” She looked around, spotting his shaak toy on the floor in the corner. “Rex, could you..?” She gestured with a twitch of her lek.

“Yep,” he said, bending down and then straightening up with a wince. “You two coming?”

Putting Jacen back into his cot was the usual production; he demanded kisses and cuddles from both of them, and his shaak toy and the fluffy bantha Zeb had brought back from his last trip, and the special blanket from Mandalore woven with vivid clan symbols Sabine refused to explain to Hera. And then Hera had to sing to him… finally he drifted off.

Without discussing anything she and Rex left him curled up comfortably in his cot in Hera’s room and headed a few doors down to Rex’s old room. Rex usually slept in the big bed beside her – when they were sleeping. Sometimes, though, adults needed a bit of privacy.

“What were you singing to him? It’s pretty.”

Hera snorted. “Luckily neither of you speak Old Ryllan. It’s one of the Syndulla clan chants, about my ancestor’s wars – all about how we defeated our enemies, crushed their skulls and sold their children into slavery, all in perfect alliterative heptameter.”

Rex’s eyebrows shot up. “Sounds delightful. Are you sure you’re not Mandalorian?”

“You think the Mandalorians have a monopoly on violent civil wars? I’ve got some sad news for you about this galaxy, Rex.”

Rex laughed. “It’s not what I would have expected from you, that’s all.”

Hera shrugged. “I spent a lot of time in bombing shelters and rebel hideouts when I was a kid. Wasn’t much to do down there. But for some reason my father kept dragging some of the family heirlooms around with us, including a set of the family chants. I taught myself to recite the whole six books when I was eight.”

“Kriff, you must have been bored!”

“Oh yeah. Bloodthirsty too. I was a handful.” Hera shook her head, smiling. “What were you saying to Jacen before? Seemed to work pretty well to calm him down.”

Rex stopped and looked at her, a strange half-smile on his face.

“Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony.” He stopped the recitation, still smiling. “Don’t worry, Hera, I didn't tell him the last line.”

She didn’t recognise the words, but they sounded deeply familiar. “And that is?” she asked, already half-expecting what Rex was going to say.

“Death, yet the Force.” Rex’s smile softened, his expression gentle but without apology. “It’s a Jedi meditation mantra, of course. There’s a few different variations; I learned a different one from Skywalker, but Kanan told me his lineage always preferred this version.”

“Rex…” Hera didn’t know what to feel, what expression was on her face. Rex buried things, he was bad at that; sometimes he could almost make you forget that he’d loved Kanan, too.

“There’s almost no-one left who would recognise it,” he said simply. “These kind of things weren’t shared widely, and the Empire has done a damn good job destroying any trace of the Jedi. Without the last line, it could be a religious chant from any of a dozen worlds. I bet the Lasan have something like it, just for starters…”

“I wish you’d told me,” Hera said on a sigh. Maybe she ought to argue with Rex – but his reasoning did seem solid, and she couldn’t bear to take yet another thing from Jacen that would link him to his father. “If we’d talked about it first…”

Rex sighed. “I know. I’m sorry, you’re right. I didn’t plan it… I guess I was thinking about the old days, and when he started crying like that, it just came out.”

Hera reached out and touched his shoulder. Rex had seen her at her worst, and held her together through it: those early dreadful days after they’d lost Kanan and then Ezra, when it had felt like her family had fallen apart and she’d been drowning in loneliness and survivor's guilt.

Jacen had helped too – except for those times when she’d looked at him and only been able to see a little Human with echoes of his father in his face. Rex had helped her look after him, on those days when she could barely stand to look at her son. So had Sabine and Zeb and Chop and even Kallus, her friends on the Alliance bases on Yavin and Hoth. But these days Sabine and Zeb and Kallus had their own missions to run, their own lives to live. Rex - and Chopper - were the only ones who was always there for her. And Rex could do things for her that Chopper couldn't.

They were still standing in the corridor outside Rex’s room, but the only other sentients on the ship were Jacen, asleep in their room, and Chopper, who was charging: there was no need for privacy, no one here to see. Hera reached over to Rex and kissed him.

He relaxed immediately into it, hands coming around her shoulders, brushing deliciously over her lekku. The brush of his facial hair over the delicate skin of her face was another tease, the sensation surprising even after so many years of sleeping mostly with Human men. She ran her hands over his back, feeling muscle through the thin worn fabric of his shirt.

“Hello, you,” he said against her mouth, smiling. He kissed his way down towards her neck.

“Mmm,” Hera murmured, stretching and tilting her head for him. “Want to take this inside?”

“I suppose we’d better,” he said, regretfully. “Not sure if my back is still up to doing this vertically.”

Hera grinned, pretty sure she was thinking about the same thing he was. She still had fond memories of the time she and Kanan managed to get Zeb, Ezra, Sabine and Chopper out on a daylong mission, leaving Rex behind with them; she’d claimed she needed extra hands to help her repair some blown fuses, but in fact they’d just fucked their way through the _Ghost_ , getting weeks of furtive touches and unconsummated desire out of their systems. They started standing up in one of the rear cargo bays, and ended with an impressive display of athleticism on all three parts in the cockpit, in which they’d christened the pilot’s chair even more comprehensively than she and Kanan had when they’d first started sleeping together.

On the way they’d stopped in just this corridor; Rex had held her up and kissed her lekku while Kanan got on his knees and ate her out, slowly and comprehensively, until she’d been just about yelling the walls down. Then Kanan had gone down on Rex too.

She wasn’t sure, now, if it had been the first time he’d done it – it might have been. Back in those early days Kanan had still been flinching, sometimes, at Rex – at the sound of his voice, or when Kanan came across him unexpectedly, a clone's presence in the room with him. Even after Kanan started actively trying to work past his own fear and bad memories, it still took time.

Rex had been so gentle with him, so patient. Never pushing. But Hera could still remember the look on his face, that afternoon when Kanan had leaned into him smiling, and taken Rex’s cock into his mouth…

Force, she missed him, she missed him so much.

It was almost as if she could still see him, still feel his presence in the memories they both shared. If she only kissed Rex long enough, built up their desire far enough, maybe she’d catch an echo of him. Just a glimpse would be enough…

“Hera,” Rex said, tugging her inside, his hands firm around her hips. “Hera…”

“I’m here,” she answered, pulling him tight against her.

Even now there was still life left in the world, still desire. Still love.

He ran his hand up her back again, up the length of her spine. When they'd started sleeping together his hand had sometimes paused at this point on her back, as if he'd expected to find a third lek there... He hadn't done that for years, though.

They hit the doorframe together and broke apart slightly, laughing. Then Hera leant her head against his shoulder, letting Rex trail more kisses over the top of her lekku.

"Do you still think about them?" she found herself asking, suddenly. "Ahsoka, and General Skywalker."

She felt the sigh running through his body. "Not all the time. But tonight, yeah. I don't know why..."

"I don't mind," she said, realising how true it was as she said the words. "We've all lost too much. You should talk about them more often, tell stories to me and Jacen. Keep their memory alive..."

 _Like I'll need to do with Kanan_ , she thought but didn't say.

"Hera," he whispered, eyes full. He kissed her again, deep and hungry. "I ought to forget them, it would be easier - that's what I was trained to do - but I don't want to. I don't want to lose any of it, lose anything of them. Even if it hurts now, the good times were worth it, and I don't want to lose them..." 

"Me either," she said against his mouth. "I'll help you remember, if you help me remember Kanan..."

"I promise," he choked out, eyes still fixed on hers. 

She kissed him over and over, lost in the taste of him, his heat against her skin.

 _Don’t leave me_ , she wanted to beg Rex, but she couldn’t; no one could promise her that. Rex, of all people – white haired and aching in his thirties, his manufactured body slowly breaking down – least of all.

He pushed her down to the bed and ran his hands over her lekku with just the right amount of pressure and she gasped into it, arching up against the warm strength of his body. His shirt was in the way, her flight suit, his trousers; but it didn’t take much to deal with that.

She loved the feel of him, the texture of his skin, the crisp hair of his body brushing electrically over her.

 _Stay with me_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn't say that either. One day there'd be another mission, or maybe another person, and Rex would leave - or maybe she would. She couldn't ask him for anything that she couldn't give to him herself.

“Now,” she said instead, and he pushed into her: hard and fast and utterly controlled. Pleasure was building in her, overwhelming. His face was clenched in desire, amber eyes hot and locked on hers. It wouldn't last forever, it couldn't, but now it was sweet, so sweet...

Afterwards she clung to him like she was drowning, small trembling aftershocks still running through her. He rested his head on her chest, pressing careful kisses against her collarbone.

“I love you,” she said, finally. He looked up, startled, and met her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“So am I,” he said softly, and smiled.


End file.
